


"One Way Or Another" is not an I Love You

by maxsaystowrite



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, I've worked on this for 8 months pls respond, Jewish Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Jon's a monster and Martin is soft, M/M, Martin Blackwood's Poetry, Season 5 Spoilers, all martin blackwoods knows is love and create and be human, and isn't that amazing, jonmartin, martin thinks poetry can save the world, written during mid season 5 break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxsaystowrite/pseuds/maxsaystowrite
Summary: The descent into becoming a monster wasn't as drastic as Jon thought before it happened. You can still love and ache and dread. Those little shreds you cling to are so important. You and the one you love only have those shreds left.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	"One Way Or Another" is not an I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> This is 8 months in the making who is READY

The cold of the floor burned the bottoms of his feet. The sensations around him were both numb and too intense. Jon didn't feel the scratchy wool of the blanket on his bare skin. The heat that incubated him still sat in his bones even as he shed the layers. He hadn't been up in so long. 

Nothing ached like being bed-bound for weeks should have left him. Jon wondered when the last time he really felt an ache in his joints. He wondered when he had his last migraine or when his last craving for food was. Even now with extra focus, his stomach was content without food. He hadn’t eaten much since they were in Scotland. Martin would make for the both of them, Jon ate what he wanted. 

He could feel his stomach churn in regret.  _ If only I had his cooking when I still wanted to eat. _

Jon pulled on the outfit that had been laid out for him, thrift clothes from the nearby village. He had brought the hiking boots from home, near pristine things that he bought once when he said he’d go on an “adventure” with Tim back in their research department days. Jon canceled on him last minute and the boots have been hidden in their box ever since. When he was packing for the train he thought about his time at Georgie’s and in America. Jon wanted comfortable shoes if he was going to run. Jeans, an old button-down, a too-large hunting jacket all swallowed his small frame. He wasn’t sure what the weather would be like in this new world, Martin just wanted them to be prepared. 

The smell of coffee and the crackle of bacon, all things Jon will always think smell undoubtedly like Scotland for the rest of his days, were filling the tiny kitchen. Martin’s face was knitted into a mask of frustration. 

_ It’s concentration. _ Jon instantly corrected himself. 

He was trying to watch the food. It couldn’t turn into something else if he was watching it. Nothing is as it was anymore, but magic still didn’t happen before his eyes. 

“It smells good,” Jon said, shuffling up behind him and wrapping his arms around Martin’s stomach. Jon pushed his face in Martin’s back, taking in the scent of his detergent and the air that dried the sweater. It still smelled like Scotland too. 

“Thank you,” Martin said, trying his hardest to lean into it. “I know you said you weren’t sure if we still needed to eat and what not but I still thought one more breakfast might… Do us some good.”

Jon looked at the bacon in the pan and although there was a wonderful nostalgia to the sound and smell, he was utterly uninterested in it. He almost felt nauseous at the thought.

“I think it will too.”

They sat for their last Scottish breakfast in their little cottage, where the air still smelled like them and fear hasn’t leaked into the cracks. It was supposed to be happier, they were supposed to be more normal. They were supposed to be  _ normal _ for just that moment more. Jon swallowed down his coffee and Martin was able to sip on tea. The Earth was still for them for one more breath.

Jon led the way, taking the first step outside of their enclosure. The ground below him surged into his legs, filling him from the bottom up. The fear that pulsed out of the seven billion people on earth was thick around them. Like humidity, Jon could drink the air, feeling it all in his lungs and in his veins. His blood had evaporated long ago, leaving only the power of the watcher to flow through him. The world’s suffering sat in his stomach like a well-cooked meal and it tasted sweet like berries fresh from the bush.

It used to taste like unripe fruit. Though, Jon tried to remember if this was, in fact, the first time he found fear to be delicious. 

“Jon, are you alright?” Martin asked, lacing their fingers together. Jon was brought back to the reality in front of him.

“Yes, just a bit light-headed,” Jon said, not entirely a lie. “First time outdoors in… a while.”

“Right,” Martin smiled at him, wholly and softly. There was something so clear in those eyes of his. Jon felt the gentleness that he always did from Martin. Something so cleansing and right that even though the world was completely crumbling and it being his own fault, Jon could believe that he was still good, after it all. Just by the way Martin looked at him. 

“Let’s go.”

Jon started towards the new Panopticon.  _ “You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you. And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in between.” _ There was something more boring into him than just the unblinking eye that stared at him. Jon could feel the pulling of the Eye from the moment it blossomed in the sky. Jon knew inherently which way to go because he was walking there on a tightrope, one foot in front of the other, teetering on the path. There was no other way.

As the first domain came closer, on the edges of its powers reached out to Jon. His shoulder, where Melanie sunk a knife into him, marking him for the slaughter, hurt like the moment it happened. Pain was more intense, like cold and heat. Jon looked for Melanie in the trench as they passed and found nothing, no one. He  _ couldn’t _ find Melanie. Not in the trenches, not anywhere in the world. Dread weighed on his shoulder, a pressure to be ever-present.

Jon could feel the worms in his skin again when they entered the Corruption’s domain. He relived the sensation of the worms burying themselves into his skin, the way they burned, and ate through flesh and muscle. Jon absentmindedly scratched at the holes in his skin as he described Jillian Smith and her decomposing blue fungal flesh. He dug his nails into them, trying to scrape out whatever was left in there. 

_ “As the flames consume the last of Mrs. Kim in thick and acrid smoke, the mold reaches the bones of Jillian Smith, and she  _ **_blooms_ ** _.” _

Jon looked down at his wrist, a pockmark he would always play with after a moment with the corruption, statement, or otherwise, and he saw blood pooling from his wound. He could have sworn there was a worm in his skin, he felt it lay its eggs. But instead of a festering nest of maggots, there was an eye staring back at him. He blinked, and it blinked. It was a radioactive kind of green at first with blood running down the rest of Jon’s arm like tears. It faded in color a bit, but never went away. When Jon ran a finger over it, he felt the same strain he felt if he pressed on his own two eyes.

Without a second thought, Jon pulled his sleeve down to cover it.  _ There’s no need to bother Martin with that. _ He thought while making the promise to himself not to touch the others. He’ll only have the one eye, peering at him from under his coat.

It was a foolproof plan to hide the one spare eye on his body. Just keep his wrist covered at all times, then when the world went back to normal, there would be no eye to hide. 

Foolproof, yes, but not fear proof. 

_ "There is more suffering than you can ever experience, so much more. The horror of your victims, their constant, senseless agony."  _ Jon could feel himself revving up just at the sight of Not Her. The elongated form of the only face he could put to Sasha. Even with all his knowledge, all his strength, Jon still couldn't bring the original Sasha to mind. She was always this scraggly blond thing. Even if he knows that's wrong. Sasha James was this thing now. Jon had no say in the matter, with all his power, he could not bring people back from the dead. He couldn't bring back those who were eaten.

_ " _ **_Feel_ ** _ it now.  _ **_Understand_ ** _ it. You have drawn out so much despair, and now  _ **_finally_ ** _ , it’s your turn." _ Jon imagined himself like a laser, he was warming up as he spoke, gathering all the energy he needed to pull the trigger. A rush of heat filled his every cell waiting to pull the trigger. 

It was too late when he felt his scars pop open. He was already bringing down hell on the creature.

_ "Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing." _

The shock Jon felt was similar to static electricity on a larger scale. An intense prickling of every nerve in his body. As the static flowed through him, Jon felt truly alive again. His heartbeat in his chest and blood rushed his head.

_ "Who-a-oa!"  _ Martin cheered.

Jon could hear pounding in his ears. 

_ "What was  _ **_that_ ** _?!" _

Jon tried to breathe, to calm himself.

_ "Are you kidding me? You - you  _ **_obliterated_ ** _ her! You - you  _ **_smote_ ** _ her!" _

The eyes hurt underneath the jacket. They scratched against the rough corduroy of the sleeve, their irises rubbing the material as if they were trying to see through. They bled again, like the first. There was pain in their presence. Pain like this, in this state, hurt more than anything before. Jon wasn’t  _ supposed _ to feel pain anymore. Right?

“We should go.” Jon heard himself mumbling. 

Martin was saying something, gushing over something. Jon couldn’t really hear over the pain and the screams. 

“I, I don’t - want to know; pl- We need to go.  _ Please _ .”

“Oh, oh, okay, a-alright, alright, lead on!”

Jon had grabbed their bags. Jon did just that and led on. He walked far and fast trying to keep the pain down and trying to keep his head straight. His consciousness floated on a high so strong he almost longed for the couch on his old uni campus he’d crash on. There was a bubble in his stomach and the pain finally faded into a buzz of something  _ more _ .

And Martin was talking to him again, and Helen was there now, right in front of them. She was hard to perceive while completely level headed but now Jon could see her and through her. Freckles of colors and shapes, even as Helen, a form she had chosen, she was still abstract and sharp. She could cut you if you come at her from the side. Jon saw her as the form she was always meant to be before she was spliced with Michael in a cave. Before humanity was woven into her.

Jon knew she felt hate because Michael let hate get the better of him. He wondered if she loved too, a by-product of the change. She had once confessed that she  _ liked _ Jon.

Helen explained him, why he was the way he was now, how he incinerated a monster completely because she crossed them. That he was to be feared, that he was  _ important  _ here.

“I don’t see why you were being so coy about it-”

“Because I’m  _ ashamed _ , Martin!” Jon looked at Martin with exhausted eyes. “Yes! Ashamed of the fact that I just - destroyed the world and have been  _ rewarded  _ for it, the fact that - I can walk safe through all this horror I’ve created like a… _ fucking tourist _ , destroying whoever I please. The fact that I… enjoyed it, and… the fact that there are so many others that I want to revenge myself on!”

It came out so suddenly, it came out before Jon could edit himself. He admitted it, he said it. Finally. He  _ enjoyed _ it, the rush of power and knowledge that he was hurting it. Jon felt the fear of the Not!Them on his tongue and it tasted like honey with bread. Its fear was sweeter than that of humans. He was the first one to taste it, he will be the only one to taste it. 

"…No; no, I actually think you’re good on that front."

"What?"

_ What? _ Jon’s head pounded with confusion. The dread of anxiety crept from his shoulders and into his chest, clawing its way to his throat to cut off his air. Martin was  _ excited _ about this new power. Martin wanted the avatars dead. And Jon could help with that, Jon could be his hero.

And he  _ wanted _ that. There was an urge in whatever was left in him to be Martin’s savior and in turn, the savior of the world. It came face to face with Jon’s guilt. A complex that told him every waking moment that the screams of terror and suffering was all because of  _ him _ . This world that he knew and loved was torn down into shreds because of  _ him.  _ Jon could put the world back together if he tried, right? Jon had the power to eviscerate a being made of fear and nightmare, why couldn’t he reverse this all?

Jon looked back with one of his many eyes to the Merry-Go-Round to see it still turning. The people still scream and struggle with their fleeting identity. They went round and round in a nauseating blur of color and music. Every run the calliope would hit new high notes that knocked into their ears, bringing them back into the bodies they had forgotten about. The panic would set back in that they might be in a body but they had no true idea of  _ who _ they are. Who they were. In the outline of their consciousness, they could almost remember their old lives. But remembering hurt too, it might have hurt more.

There was only one thing that changed since the smiting of Not!Sasha. Instead of it feeding directly on the fear it circulated, Jon was getting it directly. There was a diversion from him, the Stranger did still exist, even if its agent was gone. But there was no second mouth to feed now and everything that would go to Not!Sasha pumps into Jon’s veins.

Jon looked at Martin in all his joy and couldn’t tell him no. Jon couldn’t tell Martin that the only bit of power they might have, doesn’t reverse anything. There is no freedom for those on the Merry-Go-Round. They just suffer and feed the Stranger and the Watcher like livestock, the same as always.

So it was easy to pass over the Buried without trying to find anyone to smite. No one truly  _ caused _ suffering in the Buried. It was just a fear so natural, it's always been unsure which came first, the god residing or the humans getting crushed. 

It was easy to pass through the End’s domain without finding Oliver Banks. He was an observer to this all, taking detailed and intense notes of the effects this world has on the paper-thin reality wrapped loosely around it. If the End hadn’t gotten to him first, perhaps Oliver would have been an extension of the Eye. 

Curiosity prickled Jon at the thought of Oliver Banks being an Avatar of the Eye. He wondered if there was a way to be an extension of more than one fear. If you can be claimed by multiple entities and do their bidding. Agnes Montegue was touched by the Web but she  _ was _ the Desolation. Her everything was fire, heat, and destruction. The Web might have tried to take her, to use her power for its own will, but that didn’t pan out very well for either god.

Jon made note of all his scars and wondered why he stumbled upon the Eye as his god. Or why this god had chosen  _ him _ . The Eye was not the first fear to touch him. His paranoia didn’t manifest until after the Web marked him as their own. 

He had no direct scar from Mr. Spider, just the very intense aversion to spiders. Jon’s fingers slipped up to his neck, to the chain hanging down. He forgets about it sometimes, he’s worn it ever since. 

Though the Web did not take him that day, it took his ignorance. Jon had seen behind the vail, his third eye opened with cold concrete under him and a door to hell in front of him. He ran faster than he ever thought he could that day. And when he stopped to breathe, because he still needed to breathe, his skin felt like it was on fire. Jon didn't know that it wasn't the physical strain, it was fear. Pure terror ignited his blood and his lungs and somewhere deep in his chest he wondered when he could get another hit.

Jon remembered being the ever-practical child, his first coherent thought after seeing a large spider leg consume another boy was about protection. He had to protect himself, from spiders, at least. Magical evil spiders. But little boys rarely know what magic is for. They rarely know what they invite in.

His grandmother found him rooting through her jewelry when she came home.

_ "What do you think you're doing, young man?"  _ She asked more firm than angry, a practiced patience in her voice. 

Jon nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard her.  _ "N-nothing was just looking… I was, I wanted… there's a lady at temple that has this bracelet with all these eyes and I asked her why she had a bracelet with just eyes on it and she told me that they were for protection and I said for protection? And she said yeah they were protecting her from evil and I think that I need… I should be protected from evil." _

His grandmother knelt before him then, taking his face into her hands. She was a serious woman whose face aged with all her tragedies and frustrations. Wrinkles and sagging redrew her face early in life. Worry melted some of her harsher features in that moment. A soft expression washed over her.  _ "Jon, dearest, did someone hurt you? You can tell me if they did, you won't be in trouble." _

Jon was a terrible liar, she knew this, but it didn't scare her any less. He blinked at her. He got his seriousness from her.  _ "No, gran, I just want to feel protected. That's all." _

_ "Are you sure?" _ She asked again. 

_ "I'm sure." _

His grandmother nodded and stood.  _ "Then we should get you something. I think I have the perfect thing." _ She went to the nightstand on the far side of the room, away from the side she slept on. Jon followed close behind, trying to get a peek. He could only see old photos that were stashed away for as long as he could remember, a glimpse of his mother's smiling face.

She turned to him with a jewelry box, cradled with careful hands.  _ "This was your mother's years ago. I think she'd like it if you had it." _ She removed the top and lowered a bow so he could see. On a thin silver chain was a glass eye staring back at him. A deep blue surrounds the sky blue eye that sat in the middle of the bead. The pitch-black pupil gawked at him. Jon reached for the necklace, picking it up by the clasp. 

It hung in the air as he held it up to the light. The deep blue was almost purple right in front of the bulb. The chain glittered away as it caught every fractal it could. It would stand out against his dark skin but would have a similar effect, catching the light as to appear invisible. The glass eye would be floating in the middle of his chest. He could feel it then, the weight of it against his sternum. It was jewelry, it was glass, it shouldn't have pressed against his skin and bone.

Jon didn't say anything. He just hugged his grandmother, pulling her close. 

He always wondered what would have happened if he told her everything. Would she have believed him? Taken him to the door to see? Would she have been so intrigued herself they'd start hunting Lietners together just to destroy them? Or would She have hushed away the thoughts in his head, tell him there's no such thing as mister spider? Would he have listened? Would he have been able to forget what he saw and walk away from that necklace staring back at him? No, he always supposed, he couldn't let it go, and probably never would.

Jon ran his thumb over the cool glass of the Eye, feeling it look back at him. What did it mean if he had always felt protected by the Eye?

Thoughts of his grandmother were strange to Jon, he didn’t think of her much when they exist in the same world, and to think of his grandmother in this place filled him with a rage he couldn’t understand. She might have been tired but she was gentle. What would she have thought of him?

That’s when he took a hard turn in the roots. Jon knew who was next in the stretch in front of him. Jude Perry was on the list of Avatars who  _ deserved  _ what’s coming, despite her death meaning nothing. Jon’s fingers buzzed as they walked closer to her. He felt the tips of his fingers split into tiny green eyes of their own, old burns from when he was young and smoked cigarette after cigarette to feel the burn in his lungs, burns he never noticed as enough to bloom into anything. 

_ “Now, feel it. All the terror and pain you’ve inflicted.” _

Jon watched as Jude Perry started to melt. Her feet melding to the floor and her stomach pooling out from her body onto the floor. He knew that she was trying her hardest to harden, to keep herself together, her strangled pleas told him everything. And with the knowledge of the suffering she caused, applying it back to her was simple. As he pressed harder on her, he couldn’t help a smile. It slipped out of him.

_ “And so do you.”  _

That snapped him back into his own body. Jon was back in his human form so suddenly his feet wobbled to life. In a human’s body, the human thoughts returned.  _ “You’re enjoying this, right?”  _ Jon nearly retracted at the very thought, reeling in all the white-hot terror that he could inflict.  _ “You want to use those powers of yours to hurt people. You want to murder everybody who can’t fight back at you now?” _

Jon  _ would  _ have stopped there if he could. Like the stream of words and emotion that flowed from him whenever he read a statement, once this was started it couldn’t be stopped. Jon wanted nothing more than to stop it. 

When Martin screamed for her to die, Jon pushed again. Just to reach the end quicker. She would have died with the weaker stream, she would have died eventually, and it would have felt just as horrible. He wondered if making her suffer like that was worse. 

_ “You’re not - better - than - me!” _

Jude Perry’s final scream came with a splitting in Jon’s ears. He looked down to see the newly formed eye staring back at him through blood and torn skin. It took up his entire palm, blinking at him as he tried to get it closed. There were more on his hands, all the burns he received from cigarette butts and matches in his life, but the one on his palm concerned him more. It wasn’t green like his arms or neck. This one was dark brown, almond-shaped, watching him. A chill ran down his spine as he forced it to close.

“The fires are still here. Doesn’t look like much has changed.” Martin said through labored breath. 

“No… I suppose not.” Something light inside of Jon was floating to the surface, slipping away.

“Let’s just get out of here.”

Thoughts of flames devoured Jon’s mind. Fire was always so mundane to him. It was always in the house and being used as a symbol of something holy, something freeing. They lit candles for Hanukkah, stumbling through the Hebrew prayer, replacing the tail end  _ hamotzi lehem min ha’aretz _ , with the longer  _ asher kid'shanu b-mitzvotav, v-tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.  _ Every year, a few times a year, there'd be a yahrtzeit candle, a candle to remember the dead, on their stove so they could watch it. They never stumbled through that prayer. And on a special Shabbos, they'd light the candlesticks, for Passover or Rosh Hashanah. It seemed to be a breeding ground for someone to fall in love with flame. 

Though, he never did. He never reached out to touch the flickering light. Jon had no desire to play with candles, stick his fingers in the wax. There was no love for the soft orange glow, no desire to make it change to a scorching blue or a melting white. There was no spark inside of him, no Inkling to knock over a candle and catch the world ablaze.

The closest love affair he had with the Desolation, the fire, the heat, was when he took up smoking. He was fourteen and had the possibility of being cool for the first time in his life, of course, he couldn't resist. His lungs lit up with every inhale of tar and chemicals. They burned in such a delicious way.  _ Tck, tck, foosh. _ The feeling of the lighter against his thumb as his bad habit created a callose, as his fingertips burned at the end of a cigarette or the metal running too hot against his skin.

Jon felt the weight of his lighter even now in his pocket. He reached in with his dominant hand, his new lighter from when he picked out once he started smoking again. He felt the pattern before he truly saw it. An engraved spider glinted with no sun to shine down on it. Its flame normally licked at his skin, burning him softly. He ran his finger over the spark wheel, pulling it around slowly, the groves in the metal fit perfectly in the calloused grooves in his own skin.

_ Tck, tck, foosh.  _ Jon watched the fire dance. His hand opened up around the lighter, Jude Perry’s eye looking at her longest love. 

“You alright there, Jon?” Martin asked, looking over at him. “You gonna light up? I didn’t think nicotine really had a purpose here.”

Jon brought the lighter up to his eye. “If it's bad for you… it remains.” Jon said. “Though… it’s not really that simple… Some people fear dying of lung cancer or their yellowed teeth falling out after years of neglect. They’re tools more than anything.”

“Okay…” Martin said, watching as Jon closed his lighter and put it back in his pocket. “Are you still going to smoke, then?”

Jon thought about it for a moment, trying to feel as connected as possible with his body. There was no ache for nicotine, his lungs didn’t call out for the stinging sensation he’s grown accustomed to.

“No… I don’t think I will. As much as I think I might want one… It’s not me… So… No, I won’t be having one.”

Martin set his eyes forward with a small smile. “Good. I think it's best if you quit again.”

Jon raised an eyebrow, smiling at him. “Oh? You think I should quit? I didn’t know you had an aversion to smoking. Not a deal-breaker though?”

Martin swallowed, he didn’t look Jon’s way though. “No, can’t be really… I grew up with the smoke all around… I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t be used to it…” Jon mumbled, trying his hardest to keep the creeping visions of Martin’s foggy adolescence filled with lonesome nights with nothing but a pen, a notebook, and a torch under a blanket. Martin created strings of words that beat like a heart while he was suffocating under the Lonely’s heavy mist. Even if he couldn’t see it, even if he didn’t know there was a leech sucking at him, Martin still tried to combat it with everything he had. Creation in the most desolate landscape can be so vital. Jon looked at Martin and marveled at how strong he was, even when Martin didn’t know. 

“But, you’ll be happy to know that I don’t even have any! So there's no worries.”

Martin smiled softly at him. “Good to know there's one less thing to worry about in the apocalypse.”

“I thought you might,” Jon said, smiling wide at him, any hint of sarcasm going way over his head.

Martin stopped suddenly and Jon halted next to him. He wished he didn’t know already why they were paused.

“This is the Lucas Manor… Isn’t it?” Martin asked.

Jon nodded. “Yes… It’s… It’s the Lonely’s domain.” He said. Moorelabs Manor was a tall structure even within the void of the hellscape they were in. It pales in comparison to the New Panopticon, but it was still unperceivable in stature. The railing curled into themselves in the border around the long, wrap-around porch, the stairs beckoned them forward and the grand doorway was left open just a crack for easy entrance.

“I thought you killed Peter already… I thought he died when you saved me when we-”

“It’s not that simple,” Jon winced as soon as he said it. Martin flashed him a look immediately. “I mean, the Lucas family has been attached to the Lonely for generations, just because the current Lucas died doesn’t mean the whole family has been disowned by the Lonely. Remember Peter’s brother? The one who died before he could get married? He spoke to his fiance beyond the grave to save her from the Lonely in the family graveyard. This is a powerful entity, one that has been with humanity for its entirety. And the Lukases… Well… I wouldn’t be far off if I were to say the Lukases have been with the Lonely since the beginning.”

Martin still didn’t look away from the door, watching as the fog rolled out of the doorway, creeping towards them. 

“And we have to go through it, yeah? The journey will be the journey and all that?”

“Yes.” Jon could see him start to shake, his knees were weak and his fingers were curled into fists. Jon took a step towards Martin, reaching out for his hand. Jon took hold of his hand and unfurled his fingers, fanning them out, then lacing his between them. “But we’ll make it through. Like all the others before, We’ll make it through.”

Martin pulled Jon’s hand up and kissed his knuckles. “Yeah… Together?”

Jom squeezed his hand. “Together.”

The Lonely’s fog was thicker than Jon remembered. Maybe his eyes were a lighthouse amongst the clouds, a beacon to cut through the blindness. It was hard to shine a beacon without  _ Knowing _ . There was a moment in the white where it was easier for Jon to breathe. With an inhale, something slipped. There was a loss of weight in his hand. 

The Lonely only takes a moment, insidious and festering. It only took a moment for Jon to forget, not entirely, just a blink of consciousness, of all-knowing. 

For a flash, Jon was back in his grandmother’s home. Jon's grandmother's house was old in the way where drafts and spiders could get in. He'd play in the living room when he was young, his gran on the couch knitting or reading or something equally as quiet and isolating. The cold was attributed to the poorly sealed windows, neither of them could have known the Lonely's fog settled into the house's bone long before them. 

And then, he saw where he was, There were intricate patterns on the walls and furniture so lush his grandmother could never afford it. It might have been a comforting blanket of a familiar childhood. But Jon snapped out of it, quickly, and noticed his empty hand.

_ Martin _ . 

With every reach for Martin, there was a slipping, like a heel into mud. Him taking care of his mother, the nights he spent riding the tube just to find something to do, his daily routine before his days at the institute. They all ran in front of Jon’s many eyes and he reeled it all back in, just to make Martin invisible again. He would find him, eventually, even if Jon had the fleeting suspicion that Martin didn’t want to be found. 

Of course, Jon found him. The fog split at the sound of his voice, not at the cut of his Gaze. Jon was calling out to Martin as he navigated the twisting halls. It was the most human Jon’s felt in the many months, stripped of his otherworldly sight and otherwise blind by the very nature of the fear surrounding him. Jon screamed for Martin, panic sank into his bones. His throat was raw from use. Jon never yelled before. He was a quiet man, barely raising his voice. The feeling of his vocal cords straining was a necessary new. This place was for him once, Jon didn’t want to lose him to the comforts of Loneliness. Worry of not being enough to bring Martin back, stuck to the back of his throat.

Jon found him in the remanence of Mordecai Lukases room. It was almost fitting, Jon thought impulsively. There was a creeping feeling of familiarity in the room. A faint memory not his own, of being in this room while it was still a room, instead of a prison. 

The moment Jon was close enough to Martin, he jumped to embrace him. Martin was sturdy as always as Jon ran into him, wrapping his arms around his neck. He squeezed Martin so close, he wanted to feel the weight and heat of him. Martin was always so warm naturally and Jon missed him so much in the short time the Lonely took him back.

“No, never. N-Never, I-I just…” Jon said into his ear. Jon could never leave Martin behind, he would never. He tried to say it again just then, to remind Martin of exactly who he was.  _ My reason, my anchor, so much more than a rib or a friend. _

The wind picked up when Jon asked him if he wanted to stay, if Martin wanted to give in to all his natural impulses. 

Martin’s “no” felt more freeing than any destroying of an avatar. 

“It’s the Lonely… It’s me.”

“Not anymore,” Jon said, to reassure, to reinforce, to say a million things from  _ I will never leave you _ to  _ I love you so much _ .

Martin’s smile sent a pleasant tingle down his spine. “No, not anymore.”

They were closer than ever it seemed, hand in hand through horrors and hells, from then on. They had both put an end to their insecurities, Jon was enough to keep Martin away from his own domain, Martin  _ knew  _ Jon would never leave him. They were good, they were secure. 

Though they have learned, nothing is as it seems in the apocalypse. The world has been thrown off its axis and is now ever-changing. The fears were corrosive to any form of content.

The distortion of the world they once knew planted unease in Martin's chest. Twisting flowers of flesh and bone protruding in grotesque sculptures. 

"I didn’t think there were that many bones in a human body." The flowers were so large, some smaller, just planted, but most, by now, were Martin's height, taller even. He never wondered what it'd look like if you stacked every human bone on top of each other. 

Jon looked at them for a long moment, taking them in. Martin started to worry about what was going on in his head.

"Normally there aren’t... It takes a skilled gardener to get them to grow like this. The curling, cascading intricacies of collagen and marrow," there was a twinge at the edges of Jon's lips and a softness in his voice that rooted Martin's worry deeper. "It takes  _ devotion _ -" 

"You sound like you think they're beautiful." 

"Don't you?"

A rock sank in Martin's stomach. He looked at Jon with wide and terrified eyes, knowing he was too distracted to notice. Jon was  _ admiring _ the flowers and their growth. The thought rocked Martin even harder. It reminded him of Jon’s drinking the ocean through a straw metaphor. The frustration in Jon’s eyes then came to mind, how it was almost infuriating to him that he couldn’t take in the entirety of the world’s knowledge all at once. Martin studied his partner carefully, the choppy, uneven cut of hair, his scruffy beard, his tired eyes, the uneven texture of his skin. It was Jon. Despite everything, it was still Jon. 

Despite the eyes that dotted his dark skin that he tried to hide. Despite the softer tones and prettier words. It was still Jon. 

_ "Don't you? _ " Still crawled into his brain though. When did Jon's taste shift? When did he decide that ribbons of flesh, bone, and dripping blood were beautiful like the flora it impersonated?

" _ I don’t _ .  **_Care_ ** ." Jon had said. It rang in Martin's ears like a bomb went off. 

_ "No. You don't, do you?"  _

He saw the tears in Jon's eyes as he responded. "I can’t. There’s too many. I can’t save everyone.. I can’t save anyone…."

"Feel the terror and despair as your garden grows." Jon's eyes started to glow his unnatural green, filling both his irises and pupils with a radioactive light. "Let it flow through you and _blossom_." Martin will never get used to how the pockmarks on his face and neck open to look at him, and whatever avatar Jon was destroying. " _Just people, using each other up._ _Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this thing and drink. Your. Fill._ "

The flash of white was always blinding, though, Martin assumed Jon could still see his destruction. As the green faded from his eyes, Martin could see the distance in his eyes, his real eyes, his human eyes. 

"John - we  _ are _ doing good, right? Making things better?"

Distance was in his voice too. "I don’t know if that was ever an option."

  
  
  


From the moment they entered the Web's domain, Martin could feel tiny legs scuttering against his skin. He could have sworn he was bitten multiple times. And if he got too idle, he'd feel them crawling down his throat. Webs strangled his ankles and wrists, with a harsh jerking of his limbs, he'd be able to tug the strings taut. 

It was a miserable walk through a dusty theater. It reminded him of the places he'd hide in school to get away from strict teachers and malicious children. 

"If you’re bored, you could always… take in a show." Jon said to him, suggesting he sat to watch the Web torture innocent people as some form as entertainment. Martin's chest lurched at the thought. 

"That’s... That’s not funny, Jon." 

Jon picked one of the many doors, old and made of gold. He yanked the door open, the hinges screaming out after years of neglect. 

"If you say so." He disappeared behind the door. Martin heard laughing and applause from the audience. 

Martin wasn't sure if that was his Jon, if those eyes that ducked behind the door were the soft warm brown he'd always long for, or if they were a sharp green that flooded him with heat. Martin wanted to believe Jon hadn't changed  _ that _ much. Jon might not eat or drink or  _ fight _ like he used to, but he was still Jon. He was still the man that saved him from the Lonely, twice. He was still the man who set out with him to fix this horrible world. Right?

That man he knew in the archives who tried his hardest to send him away from fear so many times wouldn't bring him directly into the dark, would he?

_ "What do you think happened to all the children when the world changed? Or were you not thinking about it?" _

Children steeped in darkness and raised to be afraid of the world around them. 

_ His _ Jon wouldn't stand for this.

"We’ve got to help them."

_ "How?" _

"I-I don’t know! I’m not the one who’s supposed to know everything, alright? There has to be  _ something _ we can do!"

_ There has to be something we can do, there has to be something we can do- _ Martin chanted in his head as flashes of terrified children filled his mind's eye.

"I want you to use your power. I want you to help them; I want you to make things better!"

_ "There is no  _ **_better_ ** _ anymore." _

Every word burned Martin's skin and crushed his throat. He couldn't be hearing these things, not from Jon. 

"You keep–saying that, and I  _ hate _ it!" Martin felt his heart about to burst, his head began to throb. He didn't know pain could come without an avatar hanging over you to collect it. 

"What I know, is that leaving children here is – i-it’s inexcusable; it’s  _ monstrous _ !" Martin spat out those words like venom, and he meant them. He meant for them to sink in and hurt. It was meant to bring Jon back.

_ " _ **_Martin_ ** _. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it!" _

It came out as a lover's plea. Jon was desperate, he wanted to know how to please Martin. If only he knew. 

_ "I'm sorry _ . _ "  _ So soft and pitiful. Jon wanted comfort, he needed reassurance, he needed Martin to be kind and compassionate. He needed Martin to be pliable and weak like he had been in the cottage. 

And at one point, Martin would have. Martin would have buried his emotions and he would have felt nothing for the comfort of others. Now he was angry and he allowed himself anger now. They would talk, and Martin would soothe Jon, giving him everything he needs, but not before him. Martin will not be in last place in his own mind again. 

"Come on." 

It only came to a head when Jon let Simon Fairchild slip right through his hands. 

“Jon! You let him go!” Martin felt his anger boil over, another avatar spared, another leech of fear to continue on torturing souls. “ _ Why _ did you let him go?”

Martin watched as Jon shifted and processed. He was about to pop, say something that’s been on his mind. Martin wished it didn’t have to be like this, he wished they didn’t have to hurt each other before they talked through something. He wished they could know each other’s lines as soon as they were crossed, he wished Jon was better at sharing how he was feeling, what he was thinking. It wouldn’t always end in explosions that way.

“What is it, John? What’s  _ wrong _ ?”  _ You have to tell me. _

“I just...This whole… avenging angel thing, I-I’m not... It doesn’t feel right.” Jon said, raising his eyes up to Martin, worried lines framed his face and sorrow filled them to the brim. “I know,” Jon took in a breath. “I-I-I know, alright? But well… That’s kind of the problem; I, I have all this... power, and, and I want to use it to try to help, but I–I don’t know.” Jon paused again, frustration was eating away at him. “I mean, I do. I-I’ve done so much damage, and–and anything that might help to balance that is,” Jon sucked in a deep breath then, trying to compose himself. “But killing other Avatars is, is not–I, I don’t think it makes anything better. I think it just makes  _ me  _ worse.”

Martin watched Jon stutter through his thoughts. He watched as Jon broke down at his retrospection.

“The tenement fire is still burning. The mortal garden is growing wild. The carousel-” Jon breathed and Helen spoke. “It’s  _ not _ .  _ Fun _ .” Jon pleaded with Her. 

Helen only laughed at him. She spoke, like nails on a chalkboard. “And here I thought you’d forgotten how to make jokes.”

**_Was_ ** _ this all fun to him? _ Martin thought. His mind flashed to the last time Helen appeared, when Jon said:  _ “The fact that I… enjoyed it…”  _ His head was spinning as Helen left. Jon turned to him immediately.

“I-I, I’m sorry, Martin. After meeting the child, I thought–I’d been.” Jon took a moment to breathe. “I really hoped things would be simpler, you know? A nice straightforward apocalypse.”

Martin looked at Jon, he might have seemed worn out but there was something lighter in him then. All he could hear in his ears was  _ “it just makes  _ **_me_ ** _ worse”. _ It was harming him, this was all eating away at Jon and Martin didn’t see it. Martin was encouraging a behavior that was hurting Jon and dread melted over him. 

Martin reached out for Jon, enveloping him in a tight embrace. He needed to hold Jon, just feel him in his arms. Jon immediately took to it, hiding his face away in the crook of Martin’s shoulder. The pressure they felt from each other’s strength was so healing to them.

“No,” Martin said into Jon’s hair. “ I’m sorry. Cheerleading you when you’re on a magical murder spree probably wasn’t – a great idea.” There were a million other things he wanted to say I’m sorry for. He couldn’t count them, and he wouldn’t. He’d just remember to say them as they came from now on. 

As they continued on, Martin recontextualized Jon in his mind. Jon was an Avatar, Jon was the most important and possibly the most powerful avatar. Jon had eyes on his face and body that he tried to hide. Jon was physically beyond the body he inhabited. He had to be satiated by other means than food or drink. Therefore he would develop other tastes, for fear or terror. That had to do something to the mind. 

All of this was true, but so was the fact that Jon still felt the burden of guilt trickling down his spine with every showcase of fear or the echoes of screams.

Martin came to the conclusion that Jon might be an avatar, but maybe he wasn’t, truly, a monster. It wasn’t fair to judge a tired man on things he could not control. It wasn’t fair to deem someone unjust when they have no tools to bring about justice.

The question then became, could it all be undone? Could the world be restored back to its original state? Could Jon? Could they peel away the parts that were just Jon and throw away the parts that were the archivist?

"You’re still down to kill Elias, right?" The question came before Martin could decide against it. 

Jon nodded before anything else, an immediate relief. "I’m still going to confront him. I don’t know if it's something I’m even – capable of, but if I can and I have to, I will."

_ "If I have to _ "

Martin wanted all his paranoia to be a result of  _ something  _ taking control of him. Martin wanted to feel as if he wasn’t the one losing faith in Jon. Fleeting thoughts of doubt weren’t what he actually believed, just something his mind considered. But aren’t those thoughts rooted in truth?

When Martin looked at Jon, there was a swell in his chest. It was a feeling he could trace back to when they first met when they first started working together. Jon was a sharp man, he was meticulous and quiet. He used to hide behind his glasses, refusing to ever look above them. Martin smiled at the memory of Jon. It was almost comical, how young he looked. He’s always looked like a small grandpa, even at his youngest. His skin used to be smooth and his hair parted carefully.  _ I never stood a chance _ …

Martin thought back, trying to pick out the moment he fell in love with Jon. Was it the moment Jon’s hand got sliced open? Was it the first time he said  _ “thank you” _ as Martin gave him a cup of warm tea? Was it their first late-night working overtime in the archives? He couldn’t tell, all he knew was every memory of Jon was laced in love. 

Regardless, there were four years of devotion that Martin poured into Jon, into them. He was sure nothing could pry that away. 

Even now, as Jon was fleeting and with every step forward, more eyes crack open on his skin and he gains more control over his powers, Martin felt nothing but love for Jon. He could grow wings and a million eyes, and Martin would still love him.

A new eye split open when they reached the Hunt, the scar Daisy left for him on his neck. Martin wasn’t sure if Jon felt it, he didn’t seem to. Did Jon feel himself slipping?

  
  


_ “An eye can’t look inside itself.” _ Jon had said once. 

And that tore Martin’s attention to the pantheon ahead. A large green eye peered down at them, exactly at them. He wondered if it was an illusion, like those paintings that follow you around the room, of course it's not really looking at you but the feeling of being watched certainly sank in. Which came first, the paintings or the Eye? Either way, they could stare each other down. Maybe, hopefully, the Eye looking inside itself goes both ways, and Jon was free from the Watcher’s all knowing. Maybe they did have some sort of element of surprise. 

What a marvelous thing that was, to have an upper hand, but also to be free. Martin thought back to the flowers in the garden, they will never be human again. Not with their curling bones and unfurled flesh. The people who are Buried could never claw their way out of the dirt by design. The Web played encore after encore for their invisible audiences, digging their strings tight against the skin of their performers. 

_ "I can walk safe through all this horror I’ve created like a… fucking tourist."  _

Martin shuddered at the thought of being stuck in the lonely, even if it was probably more blissful than burning over and over again. He would rather spend eternity in the cold numbing fog than in the scalding fires of a supernatural apartment complex. But that is why he's of the Lonely. He wondered if that aided in his freedom, the coddling comfort of his own fear. 

Martin wondered if that's what made an avatar.

He knew that he didn’t have any power in this world, the only thing he had was Jon’s protection. Martin was still susceptible to loneliness and burns. Martin was still  _ human _ it seemed, longing for food and the sensation of joy. This world was tiring. Martin still felt his fingers and his toes and all the aches that came from walking on forever. He still  _ felt _ human. His heart still beat in his chest and it still begged for the comforts of their old world. 

When thinking of the lonely, all he wanted was to sing, to feel the vibrations of song in his throat. Maybe the others in the Lonely would hear, and sing along, maybe that would save them. He wanted to host those in the Hunt, seat them at a table with good food and soft conversation, letting them know there doesn’t have to be an “us” versus a “them”. Martin wanted to pry those on the carousel off and ground them, let them regain their balance and who they are.

Despite everything, Martin still wanted to save this reality. 

_ "I want to save John. I want everyone to be fine, and you know what? If we were all happy that wouldn’t actually be the end of the world."  _

They were happy for three blissful weeks, after Jon had saved him. And then the world, in fact ended. Martin wanted to return the favor. It was time for him to save Jon the way Jon saved him. But how does one kill a god? Martin thought back to the statements, all the ways victims became victors. 

There was the woman, Karolina Gorka, who decided not to fight as the buried crushed her inside a metro car. Though helpful against the buried, it didn’t mean much for the rest of the fears, even if inaction saved her. 

Helen, the real Helen Richardson, was stuck in an ever stretched hallway with nothing but doors and mirrors. She outsmarted the Spiral to get out. If Martin was going to take down the Hell God's world, he was going to need to be smart about it.

Andrea Nunis, the girl in Italy that Gerard Keay helped, she remembered her mum and whatever had swarmed her disappeared. She had remembered her mother’s face and her perfume.  _ “And with as much love as I could muster” _ rang in Martin's ears.

Noami Herne was saved by Evan Lukas’s ghost. A  _ Lukas _ loved a person so much, he reached beyond his grave to her. Noami was saved by her entangled heart.

Eric Delano was blinded by the love he had for his son. 

Jon had saved him twice with nothing but the love he felt for Martin. The thought made Martin blush. 

No, like Gerard had said, there might not have been Gods of Love and Hope but love was the antithesis to fear it seemed. 

Love was the remedy to a fearsick world. And that made so much sense to Martin. Love made the best medicine, healing so wholly in ways solitary work can’t reach. Love, a connection to another human being, to other people, is something that can cut through loneliness and paranoia, dissociation and darkness.

_ “You could do a poem.”  _ Jon had offered. 

_ I could do a poem _ … Martin thought.  _ A love poem, to create and to feel, to tear it all down. _

There was no writing that could happen, nothing for the Eye to see. And Jon wouldn’t listen in on him, he knew that. It was all memorization, to be spoken into existence when times were right and ears were turned away. There was something old about that. The Cure to fear had to be as old as the fear itself.

_ Love was always something external _

_ Mom would talk about love in the third person _

_ In the past tense. _

_ As a kid, I didn’t question why love was always so far _

_ I didn’t question why something in all the stories _

_ Wasn’t in all the rooms of the house _

The poem was a start, like bullets for a gun. Though, lead in casing isn’t what kills. In order for it to be deadly, it needed a trigger, a barrel. The poem needed a spark.

Jon was lost to the words that poured from his mouth. The compulsion to articulate the fear around would sweep him up daily, sometimes twice. It came down to a moment in time where Martin thought Jon was just deep enough to get close. 

He normally tucked himself away, far off from the group. No one liked hearing him recount the tales of those who had to endure their turture. On a particular session, Martin followed Jon, far enough back to not be noticed and to just hear him as he started. Jon’s voice seeped into a long line of nonsense words, twisting and circling at the edges of his mouth, Martin thought it might be a statement of the Spiral. His need for caution spiked, watching for Helen around every tree trunk.

_ In secondary school, _

_ my heart reached out to a boy  _

_ who I thought was like me _

_ And so I made up all the things he was _

_ He was kind _

_ He was sure of himself _

_ He was handsome _

_ He was not in a relationship with a girl _

_ He was not able to love me openly _

_ But, in my head, he still loved me. _

_ It was exactly like the type of love _

_ I’d grown accustomed to _

_ Cold and distant _

_ So far out of reach, it could never hurt. _

The Spiral’s chant was dizzying to Martin. He tried blocking it out but Jon’s voice still enthralled him. He almost stopped his hand to sit and listen to the hopping sentences that only vaguely started to make sense. Suddenly, he felt a tugging of his hand forward, there was no hand that reached for his wrist, no wind that blew him closer to his target. Just a gentle pull like a single string rolling back with a pin to be tuned ever tighter.

Martin wasn’t sure he felt too comfortable with that. One of the most terrifying people in the entire hellscape delt in strings and intricate moves. He wondered if he was playing into it all, if this was just Annabelle’s way of getting back at the Eye for destroying the world she was comfortable in. He wouldn’t blame her if this was all a revenge plot by her hand. It would just be disappointing to not have this victory to himself.

Martin felt a strange sense of calm when he finally pulled his hand back, and scurried away from Jon and his monologue. As he looked down at his prize, he felt reassured. Jon’s lighter had a large, delicate spider engraved into its metal. Maybe Annabelle wasn’t behind anything. Maybe it was just the lighter with an attachment to the Web. Even if that wasn’t true, Martin still chose to believe it. 

He wondered for a moment if Agnes Montague would have liked the lighter, both of her patrons in one small token.

_ No, I didn’t love him but God did I think I did _

_ And God did it hurt when he married that girl _

_ So love was past tense again _

_ Love was even farther away than before _

_ Love was colder  _

_ Than before _

_ And there was no uni boy that swept me off my feet _

_ No 20 something who saw me and decided to ruin me _

Martin rejoined the group and there was something behind their eyes. Basira looked at Martin, and then the silver in his hand. When their eyes met again, Martin knew Basira knew. She looked away for a moment to Jon, still in the distance. Her face had no real remorse. No true sadness in the creases of her eyes. The last look she gave him, she raised her eyebrows at him.

And he nodded to her, gripping the lighter and putting it in his pocket.

They turned their attention to Daisy, who had been watching Jon the whole time. Like a lost puppy she wanted to follow him out there, but they decided against it. Listening to him wasn’t good for anyone.

Martin felt the weight of that lighter in his pocket with every glance his way. He felt Basira's eyes on him. He felt the heart break in Daisy's gaze.

Jon had recognized her without hesitation. Martin wondered if that was because of the Eye, or if he just knew Daisy as herself. He might not have realized it, but Jon's eyes were glowing from the first sight of Daisy.He seemed overjoyed to see her again, despite the state she was in. Martin never really did understand their relationship, both oddly dependent on each other. If he didn’t know any better, he would have been jealous. But he did know better, and it actually warmed his heart to see both of them happy. Even if it only lasted a moment.

_ I was so far into life when I met him _

_ I should have known from the beginning _

_ I was breathless the moment I saw him _

_ I thought it was my nerves from the new job  _

_ And love was close again before I could tell it no _

With every pause in pace, for Basira and Daisy to hunt or for Jon to record, Martin would start his own ritual. It didn’t matter if he was truly alone or if Basira and Daisy could hear, as soon as Jon left, Martin was whispering to the lighter. Martin started from the beginning of his poem and told it, and retold it every line without too much rewriting.  _ This has to be consistent _ , Martin thought.  _ Nothing can be confused, everything has to be crystal clear.  _ There was no room for error in a ritual, his time at the archives taught him that.

It was an interesting thing, the rituals. Martin had a thought while he was reciting his poem for a third time in a row.  _ How did they know any of this would work?  _ Martin wouldn’t call his question doubt, because there was no time for doubt, but it did play on his mind that every avatar seemed sure that their ritual was going to work. The Desolation seemed to know that burning a woman in the middle of a burning forest would result in a baby being born in her mother’s ashes instead of burning with her. Nikola seemed to know that bringing together waxy nightmares and skin pelts were going to set off a merry go round of terror, only to be blown up.

Belief in one’s powers seemed the key. If they thought it was going to work, of course, it was going to work. And Martin found that interesting, how particularly similar this was to normal faith. The blind trust in it all. The entities above it all were so reliant of faith and fear, they probably wouldn’t exist without humanity and their energy. Martin thought about how they were a finite resource. Martin thought about without knowing peace or love or softness, the children they were raising for the slaughter won’t know how else to be. They will be raised to be stale and tasteless. No one will know the sheer terror of losing yourself when there was no way to construct the real you. No one will know true paranoia of friends leaving you when you don’t know what friendship is.

It was comforting to know it will end, even if not by him. This will all come to an end.

_ At first, it stung like the cold on an ice pack _

_ That stuck to your fingers _

_ “He’s always in his own head,” his friend told me _

_ “But he was just a big softy in the end” _

_ And then _

_ love burned _

Autonomy became a novelty, Martin saw as the shadows of people would scream in their fear. There was no snapping them out of all of this. Martin was able to be brought back from the Lonely but how much of that was solely Jon. Would he have been strong enough to pull himself out completely? There were moments of his own clarity where he remembered his name and the reason he breathed. Would he have known to leave, just to exit? It was always that simple. Could he have done it? Or was Jon the only thing between him and an expansive life in the fog before the End plucked him away for its own purposes?

_ It started as a melting, a warming up _

_ The actual conversations between two people _

_ His subtle casual coaxing of getting to know each other _

_ Love started to char with every minuscule give he gave _

_ “He’s not good at words,” His friend said  _

_ “Not like you, Shakespeare,” _

_ And so I looked for actions  _

_ and I lit up _

  
  


Martin watched Jon while he was around. They cut his hair before they left. It had grown long and unmanageable like a thicket on his head. It was short now, shorter than Martin ever saw it, as short as they could have gotten with scissors alone. Clippers weren’t working in this world and it was all the same, no one was going to look good in the apocalypse. 

He could see the curve of Jon’s neck now, the lines of his face were more defined. It was probably the diet of pure terror that gave him such definition, gone without a real meal for so long before hunger was taken from everyone. The more Martin focused on him, the less he looked like the Jon he knew. Not that he looked different really, this was always his face. It was just when Martin really started to look. He was longer than his mind thought and his nose had a wonderful arche, long and pronounced. His jawline was sharp and it fed into a pointed chin. Jon really was beautiful. 

Everything about Jon made Martin’s heart start to race and cheeks flush.

  
  


_ He laid everything out for me _

_ His body, his mind, his sense of self _

_ All of that shielded me from the horrors of this world around _

_ He left me home so he could fight the good fight _

_ He searched for a way out for us _

_ All as he started to slip. _

They were getting closer to the Panopticon, it wasn’t just a sky line anymore. It was a building with definition. The large eye was centered on top of it, a skyscraper pointed and ominous. Martin thought they would continue walking towards it without direction.

Then, the dirt below them turned into cobblestone, it snapped him back into the present. All around them were buildings from different time periods, mixed matched street lamps lined the sidewalk. It took Martin a moment to understand.

“We’re in London.” He said.

Jon turned to him, there was a calm on his face he didn’t recognize. “We are.”

Martin stopped in his tracks. “Everything else in this hellscape has been pop-up stalls of an entity and the Eye gets the whole of London?”

“This is the Eye’s domain, and the Eye’s armageddon. Jonah is sentimental at his worst.” Jon looked over to a victorian building on their left. It was old with large brass lettering reading  **James & Son’s Hattery** . “That was his favorite hatter when he was young. It closed in 1934 and he never really got over it.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Jonah is still in there? And he’s so petty that he has an old shop face in his scary fake Little London?” Martin asked, squinting at the frosted window panes. He was trying to see if anyone was in there. "I thought the Eye was just using him as a vessel before- Well… Before  _ this _ .”

Jon turned away from him, looking forward to the center of the world. “There’s still some Jonah in him, yes. A god of fear and terror doesn’t know how to  _ be _ . Even in this world of their own.”

Martin’s chest went cold, his breathing shallow as he felt himself shrink. “Is there any way we could save what’s still left?” Reprehensible, repulsive, irredeemable were all words Martin would describe Jonah Magnus. But if there was a shred of humanity left inside of him, Martin wanted to save it. He had a deep, insatiable need to save every soul he could. 

“No,” Jon said with a softness in his voice that made him sound so far away. Martin wanted to reach for him. “There’s no difference between the eye and Jonah anymore. He’s a monster who still remembers what it’s like to be human. That’s it. There’s no separation without killing them both.”

“Oh…”

_ Love scalds my every waking hour  _

_ Love turns my skin into a candle that I’d happily burn for him _

_ I did happily burn for him _

_ Returning his love language even if he didn’t speak mine _

_ He had a way out  _

_ And although there is no “too late” for love _

_ I still didn’t know how _

_ I didn’t know how to handle heated love _

_ That’s why I wear jumpers even too large for me _

_ That’s why I accept the silence  _

_ even when all I want to hear are words _

_ “Me and you together...getting out of here _

_ One way or another” is not an I love you _

  
  


Little London was a ghost of their lives before, their apartments were ripped right from their memories, all the darkened alley ways that used to chill their spines were in their exact place. It felt like Disney World, a caricature of a city saturated in eerily perfect structure. Maybe that was Smirke’s work. London had never looked so clean and polished. There was a skeleton of a city, but no sign of human life.

_ And love still scorched my heart when _

_ I wrapped myself in the Lonely fog _

_ It made the cold sweeter _

_ When I could remember what I was missing _

_ Even the fear is gentle here _

_ The sound of his voice echoed through my ears _

_ The most human part of him reaching out to _

_ The most human part of me _

_ “I need you,” he said to me _

_ And the fog faded from my eyes and I could breathe easy _

_ “I need you” is an I love you _

_ “Let’s go home” Is an I love you _

_ “Let me know if you see any good cows”  _

_ Is an I love you. _

Martin reached out for Jon’s hand in the lamp light. They never got this chance before, to walk the streets of London hand in hand. Jon had always been odd about physical touch, it took a lot of coaxing to get him to cuddle and he almost never reached out for Martin. Though, when Martin took his hand, Jon laced their fingers together. Jon was red hot when normally, with his poor circulation, he was cold. His grip on Martin’s hand was foreign to him. He was holding like he didn’t want to let go. Martin could feel the faint beat of his heart.

_ The world came down around our happy little cottage _

_ No, I never thought we transcended into a story book _

_ Where birds sing and happily ever afters are expected _

_ But I never thought we'd dissolve into Lovecraft’s nightmares _

_ Where silence is broken by screams not birdsongs _

_ And happily ever afters never existed in the first place. _

_ Now “I won’t let it” is an I love you _

_ Nothings so sweet anymore _

_ Now our world is rotting _

_ Waiting was my I love you _

_ And even your I love you didn’t sound so _

_ But I’m good at waiting  _

_ Always have been _

_ So I prepare like I do _

_ I pack, I pace, I ponder _

_ Then, he says  _

_ “Let’s find out for ourselves” _

_ And I see the man  _

_ That ignited me _

_ In those far off eyes _

_ “The journey will be the journey” _

_ He says _

_ “But you have to go through everything in between” _

_ He says _

_ “Nightmares” _

_ He warns _

The Penopticon looked like the archives, a twisted monument to all of the Eye’s accomplishments. The doors were wide open for them, waiting for them. Both Jon and Martin started to quicken, air became scarce in their throats. Martin felt a surge in his veins as he dropped Jon’s hand, stepping forward first. 

“Martin-”

_ There were wars and trenches _

_ Carousels of terrors _

_ Blank faces in thick dirt _

_ Puppet shows and the end of all things _

_ And I thought an end might help _

_ I thought an eradication might help _

_ I thought, I thought, I thought _

Martin started his poem, out loud, for everyone to hear this time, at the top of his lungs. He gripped the lighter in his hands and it started to grip back.

_ There must be a way _

_ For this to actually end _

_ There has to be an end _

_ And with this end  _

He didn’t hear Jon’s voice again before he flipped open the lighter. A normal flame would have been an inch, maybe two, with an orange glow. The flames licked at his hands and wrists with white energy, stretching passed a normal firestarter. It danced and reached like droplets of kerosene rained down on it.

_ Who will make it out alive _

_ Will I make it to the other side _

_ Will he make it to the other side _

“Martin!”

He threw the lighter into the archives without hesitation. It was always so dry, it was always so flammable. Martin hoped Jonah was just as combustible.

The flame disappeared behind the darkness, then started to climb the building’s face, catching almost instantly.

Martin turned around with a grin on his face.

_ In the story  _

_ Of Orpheus and Eurydice _

_ Someone always looks behind _

_ And someone is always left behind _

The smile dropped immediately.

Jon was ablaze in front of him, his arm outstretched to stop him. There were tears in Jon’s eye but no surprise on his face. The fire covered him from head to toe, nothing about him was defined. Everything about him was infested with flames, Jon tilted his head to breathe through it.

Martin reached out to his hand, but Jon recoiled, tucking his arm back into his nest of kindling.

“I don’t want you to be marked.”

_ But we will be better _

_ We will step out of hell _

_ Together _

_ And never look back _

“I love you too.” Martin said.

The fire grew around them, from behind them and from Jon. It didn’t burn, though, it was blinding to look at.  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave kudos and comment if you liked it! I have more TMA and some TAZ if you're interested in more deep dives of lore and feelings!


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